


Weakness of the Body

by ncfan



Series: Femslash Big Bang 2019 [5]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Body Image, F/F, Femslash Big Bang, Femslash Big Bang Monthly Challenge, Gen, Invisible Kingdom | Revelation Route, Invisible Kingdom | Valla, Nohr, POV Female Character, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 10:03:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18808927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: This child body of Nyx's was weak. Unacceptable, as many thing about her were. Charlotte never seemed to care.





	Weakness of the Body

**Author's Note:**

> A note: Nyx is meant to have hypotonia, in case it wasn’t clear.
> 
> [ **CN/TW** : Brief, implied suicide ideation; body image issues; self-loathing]

Charlotte was fourteen, bored, discontented with most aspects of her life, and not allowed to compete in her mountain town’s makeshift boxing ring ever again. This had been unanimously agreed upon by all referees and “judges,” though it certainly had not been _her_ choice. Apparently busting someone’s shoulder more than once was a _warning sign_ , as if that wasn’t the sort of thing that happened in the ring every day. But it was agreed upon, and if Charlotte came near the arena in any capacity other than that of a spectator, there was going to be the sort of trouble that might have more lasting consequences than what Charlotte usually walked away from the ring with. And it would make her mother cry, which _really_ made the idea of, erm, “contesting” the ruling not worth the trouble.

This, after she’d gotten kicked out of the wrestling ring—and that guy had been _fine_ after a couple months’ rest.

Great. Just great. Charlotte was banned from competing in the local fighting rings, and making the trip to the next town over to see what they had to offer was completely unfeasible. Her parents did not have the money to put her up in an inn, and it would have taken Charlotte too long to get enough money to pay them back. Well, there went the best way Charlotte had to blow off steam that didn’t involve something that _really_ would have gotten her in trouble with the local guards.

Rather more problematically, there went the best way Charlotte had to earn money to help keep food on the table. Without the winnings she could pick up from weekly competitions, they were back to relying on the commissions her father could get and what mending people were willing to bring to the house, so that Mother wouldn’t have to get out of bed. Food on the table had been quick to become scarce.

So Charlotte found herself watching sheep for one of the sheep farmers in the mountains surrounding town. She wasn’t the only shepherd around, but they all had to keep an eye on the flock, which meant hanging out a fair distance from each other, so Charlotte was spending most of the day by herself, which…

No, she didn’t much care for it.

It was easy money, at least.

Charlotte sat atop a boulder overlooking the narrow, shallow valley where the sheep grazed, watching for any sign of wolves or leopards or the other predators that could be found roaming the south of Nohr. The blue of the sky was overripe, bruised purple and gray as dark clouds approached from the north. Would it rain today? It had been another bad year for rain, too much this time, instead of too little. The farmers were had just barely been able to salvage the first harvest of the year, and Charlotte had heard the reports that trickled down south: the crops were rotting in the fields further north, the fields themselves turned to sucking mire.

 _What’s the use of having more money to buy food if there’s no food to buy?_ Charlotte wondered discontentedly, tapping her crook against the side of the boulder. If not for how disloyal the very thought was, she might have considered giving up on Nohr altogether. There had to be an easier way to find prosperity than this.

As she pondered on her life and the food-scarce particulars thereof, Charlotte’s eye was drawn east, towards a rarely-used footpath choked with weeds and young, scraggly yew trees. A small, slender shadow flickered between the ropy trunks of the yew trees that eventually resolved itself into a small, slender girl. She wore a loose-fitting gray tunic akin to what Charlotte had once seen a trader from Macarath wearing, bore a tall staff of ash in her hand, and as she drew closer, Charlotte could see that her red face streamed with sweat.

Charlotte slid down from the boulder, frowning as she waved, trying to get the girl’s attention. “Hey,” she called to her. “Are you alright?”

The girl looked up and immediately stilled, going as stiff as a deer sighted by a hunter. For a moment, Charlotte thought she might turn on her heel and head back down the trail. But after a while, the girl seemed to make up her mind, and walked over to where Charlotte was standing, huffing and puffing the whole way. Close up, her wiry dark hair was visibly frizzy and tangled, and her hazel eyes were clouded with exhaustion. “I’m…” She took a deep breath that didn’t seem to put nearly as much air back into her lungs as needed. “I am looking for the town of Adama. Is it nearby?”

Had this girl been traveling by herself? That staff was sturdy-looking, sure, but this girl was pretty scrawny. Very little meat on her bones, from what of her arms were visible under the sleeves of her tunic, and absolutely no muscle that Charlotte could make out—and Charlotte had gotten pretty good at guessing what somebody’s muscle tone looked like under their clothes. And the roads weren’t exactly safe, now were they?

But there were a lot of mages in Nohr, and the tattoos on the girl’s face were perhaps just a bit suggestive. If she’d gotten this far without being ambushed by bandits, Charlotte would just have to trust to the girl’s competence.

“It’s about a mile in that—“ Charlotte pointed over her shoulder, a rough jerk of the thumb “—direction.” She narrowed her eyes as she looked more closely at the short, slight girl who stood before her. “You didn’t answer _my_ question. Are you alright?”

The girl’s blotchy red face twisted. “You don’t need to be worried about me. I’m not someone you should waste your time worrying about.”

“What?” Charlotte bristled, anger churning in her stomach like the overflowing waters of the swollen lake nearby during yet another storm. “Don’t give me that shit; why _shouldn’t_ I worry about you? You look like you’re five steps away from falling over.”

Charlotte didn’t know what she was expecting, but she hadn’t been expecting the matter-of-fact tone of voice as the girl said to her frankly, “That’s only because you don’t know me. Once you do, you’ll understand.” It just… just flowed out so smoothly, as if it was a truth so sturdy and unshakable as the earth beneath their feet.

And yes, that confidence did make Charlotte falter, just a little bit. “You could at least sit down for a little bit. You really do look like you’re about to pass out.”

Some people were reasonable about the limits of their bodily endurance. Some people wouldn’t know how to be reasonable about it if their lives depended on it, and Charlotte could only guess that this was why the girl hesitated for so long, recalcitrance etched into her hunched shoulders and scrawled all over her face in sweaty letters, before she finally conceded, in a low, grumbly voice, “I suppose it couldn’t hurt to sit a while.”

“Great.” If Charlotte was smiling, it was only because she was relieved she wouldn’t have to haul a tiny corpse back to town come the evening. That was the only reason. “You can come watch sheep with me for a few minutes.”

It would probably be better to sit leaning against the boulder than atop it. This girl, with her scrawny arms and legs, probably wasn’t strong enough to climb to the top of the boulder. Normally, Charlotte would have chafed at having to restrict herself to someone else’s strength, but in the moment, there was only gratitude. She didn’t like seeing the vultures have their way with human bodies. Or the crows. Or the wolves. Or anything, really. It was a position too sentimental for safety, but Charlotte attached too much value to the human body, even cold and rotting, to abide a violation like that.

Sitting in Charlotte’s shadow, the girl managed to look even smaller and frailer than before; sitting, she just seemed to fold in on herself, somehow. Her skin was very pale under the red of heat and exhaustion, and when Charlotte looked at the parts of her arms that weren’t covered by her tunic sleeves, she could make out veins with ease. But she sat as tall and straight as she could, as tall and straight as Charlotte imagined a rich lady sitting when presiding over a great feast. The girl took a skin from her knapsack and held it up to her lips, but all too soon she was setting it down, grimacing.

“I’ve got water, if you need it.” Charlotte unhooked her own water skin from her belt. “And there’s a well on the road into town, not far from here.”

“As I have said, your concern is wasted on one such as me.” The girl eyed the water skin with naked longing for what felt like an eternity, before finally accepting it. “But it is appreciated, nonetheless,” she murmured.

She drank deeply and greedily, water spilling from the lip of the skin and down the girl’s chin in dribbling rivulets that plopped down onto her tunic like droplets of rain. When she handed the skin back to Charlotte, it felt considerably lighter than before.

_Good thing that well really isn’t too far away._

If it kept the girl alive long enough to reach town, Charlotte wouldn’t complain.

“So, what brings you here?” The sheep were just munch, munch, munching away on the wiry grass down in the valley. Most of the time, watching over them was so boring Charlotte wanted to rip her hair out, but there were times in which it was almost soothing. Charlotte wasn’t certain what category this occasion fell into, wasn’t certain what emotion the sight evoked in her today.

The girl picked at a charm dangling from her belt, all crow feathers and scarlet thread and bleached animal bones. “I am a wanderer. I go wherever will have me, and I stay nowhere long.”

Somehow, that just wasn’t ringing true. Charlotte prodded the girl in the ribs, nodding firmly when she found just as little muscle and spare flesh there as she could see on her arms and guess at on her legs. The indignant spluttering this provoked was roundly ignored. “Wanderer? Then why do you look like you’ve never walked anywhere in your life?”

The girl swatted at her hand. “That is no concern of yours!” she hissed, her sweaty hair practically crackling. “My body is not like yours; it does not obey the same laws.”

“Sorry,” Charlotte said quickly, abashed. Some girls just didn’t get muscles as they ought, no matter how they trained or exercised. It wasn’t often she ran into someone self-conscious about it. “I didn’t mean any offense. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the way you look; honestly, you’re kinda cute.”

And that seemed also to be the wrong thing to say, for the girl sprang to her feet, a face reddened by exertion flushing even redder. “Thank you for the water,” the girl said stiffly. “I must be going now.”

“Umm, sure.” What a fiasco. But as the girl headed off toward town, Charlotte called after her, “Hey, my name’s Charlotte!”

Charlotte almost couldn’t hear the girl’s high-pitched, reedy voice over the sudden gust of wind that shot from the clouds clustering at the northern horizon. “…Nyx. My name is Nyx.”

-0-0-0-

Years. So many years of traveling everywhere on foot, on roads where she was unlikely to meet another person (it might have been easier to travel with caravans, but Nyx couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand the confused sympathy of the people who refused to accept that she wasn’t a child, couldn’t stand the questions, couldn’t stand _‘You are not a monster_ ,’ just couldn’t stand being around the people you met on caravans for long), and still she must contend with this weakness. Nyx was not entirely certain where it had sprung from. The days when her body actually reflected her age were fogged and distant, so much so that Nyx couldn’t remember if the weakness had been a part of her then, if she had always had so little tolerance for physical exertion, and if no amount of exercise could ever inspire muscle to toughen. Perhaps it was another part of the curse she had brought down on herself with her own misdeeds. That would be fitting.

Whatever the source of the weakness, it had still been so many years, and though Nyx had never truly adapted, not in a way _she_ would call adaptation, she had had plenty of time to grow used to it, and try to stave off the more serious consequences of exhaustion. There was usually a quiet spot somewhere in the baggage train, away from Mozu’s entirely undeserved admiration and Niles’s constant jibes (Though the latter had at least subsided a little after Nyx had laid a little curse to stay his tongue for a couple of days). Nyx wasn’t really needed outside of battle, and they always needed someone to guard the baggage train during battle, so rest was not difficult to come by, and neither was solitude.

Then again, her solitude was not always complete. And Nyx… Under certain circumstances, Nyx found it less unbearable than she had thought she would.

“The sky here is so strange,” Charlotte remarked, as she ate her supper of hardtack and pickled radishes.

Plain food, but there was no game to be found in this silent land, and though the gently rolling hills were seemingly lushly fertile in a way that Nohr had never been, the plants growing here were very much not what they seemed. A soldier who picked blackberries from a bush fell down dead barely a minute after popping one in his mouth. A Hoshidan healer took a bite from a beautiful red apple and only narrowly survived; she later testified to the apple’s flesh tasting like wormwood.

After those incidents, it was decided that no risk could be taken trying to forage for something that was actually safe to eat, and that food would be limited to what rations they had taken with them. The hills were a vibrant green, the perfume of the flowers was sweet, every tree and bush brimmed with fruit and berries, and as far as the eye could see, there was nothing that was alive.

Sensible, not to trust at any of the plant life not to lead them astray. Sensible, and somewhat dangerous at the same time. Nyx had (for all that she had gone seeking solitude) spent enough time in Mozu’s company to have a good idea of how much longer their stores of food were going to last. Nyx sincerely hoped that their business in this dead land would be concluded shortly. Things might become rather less than civilized if not.

“I haven’t looked at the sky very often.” Nyx poked unenthusiastically at her own supper of hardtack and herring so heavily salted, Nyx wouldn’t be surprised if she bled seawater during the next battle. “Not since we arrived.”

At the very first sight of it, Nyx supposed she had been just as fascinated by the sky as anyone else in the force that went over the edge of the Bottomless Canyon. But that fascination had not lasted long, replaced by a singular aversion.

The best way Nyx could describe her situation was to say that looking at the sky gave her a migraine. That did not describe, exactly, the physical sensation evoked by looking up into that broken sky, patches of blue slashed and partitioned by streams of angry, roiling water, but it was close as could be. The sky was wrong. _That_ was a perfectly adequate way of describing it—the sky was wrong, like a patchwork quilt sewn haphazardly together, if some of the patches were made of solid, noxious void. And beneath that wrongness…

“This land was broken by powerful magic.” She could feel Charlotte looking at her; an explanation was clearly in order. “Powerful beyond the ken of man. This magic can still be felt exerting its power over the land; I can feel it coursing beneath our feet.” Nyx sighed, rubbing at her brow. “As it broke it, it is now the only thing holding it together. I wonder if this land will even be able to hold itself together once the source of that magic is removed.”

Charlotte slapped her plate down onto her muscular thigh. “That’s cheerful. So what, do you think we’re just gonna be swallowed up by the voice once we kill this dragon king?”

“Perhaps.” _That_ was an attractive thought. In Nyx’s case, she thought she might almost deserve it, but the idea of such a fate befalling the rest of the army made her stomach churn. She glanced up at Charlotte’s face, saw fear swirling beneath an essay at bravado, and felt compelled to add, “I do not think the effect will be immediate. If the source of the magic holding this land together is removed, it will take some time for it to dissipate. We should have time enough to escape.”

“I certainly hope so. I have no intention of dying here.”

The part of Nyx that wondered, sometimes, if she was even capable of dying naturally anymore, wondered if it would really be so bad to fall into the void with the corpse of this dead land. But the larger part of her feared what awaited her when death finally took her, and so she hoped she would be able to escape.

“We may find ourselves pressed for time,” Nyx muttered. If it came down to a run, she was almost certainly doomed.

And just as if she had spoken the thought aloud, Charlotte pressed a hand to Nyx’s shoulder and squeezed. When Nyx looked up into her face, the girl wore a reassuring smile, her blue eyes glimmering with an emotion that mixed mirth and fondness for something tepid and yet entirely too warm. “If it comes down to it, I could care you while we fled.”

Nyx felt her face grow hot. “I did not say I needed your help.”

“Oh, come on. It’s been ten years since I met you, and you’re still just as weedy as you were back then. And you don’t weigh anything; I _know_ you don’t. I could carry you, no problem.”

Nyx’s face only grew warmer, though she did not think it due to anger or embarrassment, not completely. “You will likely insist on it once the situation demands it, will you not?”

Charlotte merely nodded.

“I suppose I have no choice, then.”

“No, you don’t,” Charlotte said cheerfully, her smile brightening to a beam.

Nyx picked at her food. (She hated salted herring. They had run out of coffee beans a few days ago. Nyx would have loved something bitter, and couldn’t have it. A trifling thing to be discontented over, and yet, it nagged at her.) “Why…” When she had stayed in Adama, Charlotte had kept poking around the inn where Nyx was staying, never mind how little Nyx had done to encourage it. “Why do you bother with someone like me?”

Nyx expected a quick, airy brush-off, but instead, Charlotte frowned, winding a lock of hair in her hand as she contemplated her answer. Charlotte stared off into the distance, tilting her head to one side, and letting out a breath on a hard, low sigh. “I don’t know. You always seemed… You’ve always seemed kinda sad.”

“That can’t possibly be your reason.” It was all Nyx could do not to recoil; every part of her rebelled at such an admission, at what it represented. “Not the whole of it, surely.”

“It’s not, and if you’d let me talk—“ Charlotte elbowed her, but gently enough that nix did nothing but sway slightly “—I’d tell you.”

“Go on, then.”

“Okay, look. You know how the world is. If you’re a woman, a _poor_ woman, you’ve gotta act like a lady, or no one will give you the time of day.” Charlotte smoothed down the skirt of her frilly, powder-blue dress for emphasis. “I learned that early on.” Her mouth contorted in the hideous parody of a smile. “There are a lot of little pricks in my hometown who’ve got fixed idea of what a woman’s supposed to be like, and they _all_ think they’re the first person who’s ever been _brave_ enough to air their views, and they all think the world just _has_ to hear what they’ve got to say. I tried not to let it get to me, but—“ she shrugged her shoulders, a slow, weary shifting of the weight of an invisible yoke “—it did. Of course it did.

“I joined the guards, and I thought things would be different.” Charlotte tilted her head up towards the sky Nyx refused to look upon. She swung her left leg back against the side of the wagon; there came a clink of metal armor against wood, muffled by fine wool. “They weren’t. It was just more of the same. I still wasn’t what a woman was supposed to be. So I learned to pretend, but when people see me fight, if they’re actually _watching_ , they can see the act for what it is.” Charlotte laughed bitterly. “I can’t decide what I like less: being seen, or never being seen again.”

“I…” Nyx tried to think of a way to say it that wouldn’t be miserably, childishly self-centered, and upon failing miserably, mentally threw up her hands and went on, “I don’t see what this has to do with me.”

Charlotte slapped her face with her left hand; the slightly squishy thump of skin striking skin made Nyx wince. “At least Benny isn’t this hard to give compliments to,” she muttered. In a louder voice, “What it has to do with you, Nyx, is that I never feel like you’re judging me for my womanliness—or lack thereof. Maybe I just value people who’re willing to see me without judging me.”

Nyx had to look away. “I have no right to judge anyone.” The same toneless voice she had spent so many years perfecting, and it succeeded in sounding especially hollow now. “You should not be so grateful.”

“Hey, don’t sell yourself short.” Charlotte’s hand settled on Nyx’s shoulder again; the slow, gentle track it traced down her back sent a jolt of tingling energy up Nyx’s spine. “I like you, Nyx.” Softly, “I like spending time with you. Isn’t that enough?”

It didn’t feel like enough. It did not matter how many people Charlotte had killed in her time as a guard or as part of this army—her hands would never flow with rivers of blood as did Nyx’s hands. They just weren’t comparable; what Nyx might lack in sheer quantity, she more than made up for in _quality_. How could someone like her ever look at the hand offered and sully it with the sweetly putrid filth that clung to her own?

It didn’t feel like enough.

Nyx nodded. More than just her body was weak.


End file.
